Against his vehement objections, British director Michael Powell changed the title of his 1946 film from "A Matter of Life and Death" to "Stairway to Heaven" so it would be allowed to play in theaters in the United States. The word "death" was the problem. When Powell pointed out to the powers that be that "Death Takes a Holiday" had squeaked through regulations, he was told that one was OK because death was holidaying.

Powell's movie - a fantasy starring David Niven as a World War II pilot who survives a crash only to be sent up to heaven anyway - is being rereleased on DVD this week under its original title. Everything about "Matter" and its companion film, "Age of Consent," is exactly the way Powell created it. The DVD set was closely supervised by his widow, Thelma Schoonmaker, a three-time Academy Award-winning film editor who has worked with Martin Scorsese since they were film students at New York University.

It was Scorsese, Powell's No. 1 fan, who introduced them in 1984. They were married until Powell's death in 1990, and she remains an ardent and watchful keeper of the flame.

Schoonmaker is thrilled that "Consent" is finally available on DVD. The film is important for several reasons. Made in 1969, it was Powell's first directing job since "Peeping Tom" in 1960. Backlash to that film - a study of a psychopath who records the dying moments of his victims after he slashes their throats - had been enormous, and Powell, whose memorable work includes "The Red Shoes," "Black Narcissus" and "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," was effectively banned from filmmaking in England.

"When that happened, Michael was the same age as Scorsese," Schoonmaker said. "You can imagine if he had been told he couldn't make any more films. It would be horrible. But Michael was a very strong person, and he never lost hope or became bitter."

His prayers were answered when James Mason decided to produce "Age of Consent" (based on a novel) and brought in Powell to direct. The story is set on an island in the Great Barrier Reef. Mason stars as a painter stuck in his career who travels halfway around the world for inspiration and finds it in a native - a voluptuous teenager played by Helen Mirren in her first big-screen appearance.

"She had already made a name for herself doing Shakespeare. Michael saw right away that she was a terrific actress and a strong personality," Schoonmaker said. "He just loved her, and he could be very rough on actors if they didn't meet his expectations."

In an interview on the DVD set, Mirren returns the compliment, crediting Powell with her smooth transition to movies. Laughingly discussing the amount of time she spends nude in the movie, Mirren said, "I think I have the honor of doing the first full frontal nude scene outside of a porn movie. I was not afraid of doing such scenes. I thought that was what great actresses did."

The nudity was a problem for the studio, and Schoonmaker believes her husband shot more of it than wound up onscreen. "It is the way an artist sees the body and paints it, and it was not salacious. It is a celebration of something very beautiful."

An opening shot of a painting of a nude statue obviously modeled after Mirren was restored for the DVD. The statue appears in the title sequence, one of what Schoonmaker calls "Michael's little witty jokes." It pans over to a painting of Mason sketching by the sea.

Other scenes at his apartment and gallery had been cut. "They essentially explain the reasons why he felt he had to get away to Australia," said Grover Crisp, vice president of film restoration at Sony Pictures. "It is sometimes the case that when films get cut, some important things get cut out. We were able to locate everything and put it back together, so we are happy about that."

As executive director of the Film Foundation - an organization set up by Scorsese to preserve film - Margaret Bodde has become an expert on Powell. She views "Age of Consent" as reflective of its time, the late 1960s, "when there was more personal expression and sexual liberation. Here you have this great artist who is looking to tap into his inspiration, and he gets it from this very young person. That was what was happening with people who were very young and wanted to change the world."

By contrast with "Consent's" naturalistic setting, "A Matter of Life and Death" was made entirely on a soundstage. "It is about the war and the creation of the U.N. and response of the entire world being at war with each other," Bodde said.

The earlier film was made with his longtime collaborator Emeric Pressburger, with whom he worked under the rubric the Archers. The cuts made to it for U.S. distribution "were a kind of censorship issue," Crisp said.

The excised scene is of Niven's character crashing into the ocean and emerging on a sand dune. "It's actually in England, but he doesn't know that. He thinks he has died and is in heaven," Schoonmaker said.

He sees a little boy with a flock of sheep. "The boy is not wearing any clothes because Michael wanted not to give away where David is. So it is a classical image complete with the boy playing a flute." The Legion of Decency in the States, however, was having none of it. It made Powell remove the scene.

"Scorsese, who knew the full film, would sometimes see a print that didn't have this scene and would scream, 'That's the wrong print,' " Schoonmaker said.

The scene was restored years ago, but it hasn't been put on DVD until now.

When Powell made "A Matter of Life and Death," it wouldn't have occurred to him that he would be forced to stop making films. Directing was like breathing. By the time of "Age of Consent," he knew what it meant to be barred from doing the thing he loved most. Indeed that turned out to be the last full-length feature he directed.

"But every day he was planning a film," Scorsese said in a DVD interview. In 1985, more than 15 years after "Consent," Powell helped him come up with the ending for Scorsese's "After Hours," where Griffin Dunne goes back to the office and confronts the hell he emerged from.

"That was so like Michael," Schoonmaker said. "He just wanted to be around filmmaking."